Editorial: automation is winning the platform war, judgment is what advertisers still own.
Google, TikTok and The Trade Desk are all pushing agentic AI as the default, but the decisions that build trust still belong to humans.
Mariano De Vitto · September 2026
This week confirmed that agentic AI is no longer a pitch, it is the default setting. Google is pushing advertisers toward AI Max as the standard search buying layer, TikTok has folded its ad buying tools into a single automated purchase flow, and The Trade Desk is layering agents on top of programmatic bidding. Three platforms, one direction, all moving decisions further away from the marketer and closer to the machine.
Each move deserves its own context. Google's AI Max sits inside Search campaigns and expands targeting and creative decisions using machine learning, and the company is not framing it as an optional upgrade but as the account default going forward. TikTok, which has spent years adding discrete tools for bidding, targeting and creative testing, is now merging those into one streamlined purchase flow that removes friction and, with it, many of the manual checkpoints advertisers used to rely on. The Trade Desk, the largest independent player in programmatic buying, is adding agents that handle bid strategy and optimization tasks that historically required a human trader watching dashboards in real time.
The infrastructure shift
The pattern matters because it is happening at the infrastructure level, not the campaign level. Google is not offering AI Max as an option, it is engineering search accounts to default into it. TikTok's merged buying experience reduces the number of manual choices an advertiser makes before a campaign goes live. The Trade Desk's agents are being positioned to handle bid strategy and optimization tasks that used to sit with a human buyer. This is a structural change to how ad accounts are built, not a feature marketers can quietly opt out of over time.
The trust gap
According to eMarketer's reporting, this is happening at the same time that audiences are actively rejecting creative that reads as obviously AI generated, a tension the platforms have not resolved. That gap is the real story. Automation is winning the infrastructure war because it is faster and cheaper to run, and marketers should keep adopting it for that reason. But efficiency at the platform layer does not excuse advertisers from owning what gets shown, to whom, and why. The instinct to hand off judgment along with execution is where trust breaks, and audiences are already signaling where that line sits.
Why it matters: marketers should adopt AI Max, TikTok's unified buying and Trade Desk agents for speed, but keep humans accountable for creative approval, targeting decisions and disclosure. Automation should run the machinery, not make the calls that define brand trust. The platforms will keep optimizing for throughput. The brands that keep a human signature on what gets approved, and are transparent about what was generated by a machine, will be the ones audiences still trust when the novelty of agentic AI wears off.
The Signal Brief · Mariano De Vitto — Head of Marketing, Barcelona